131w ago - Previously we reported that VHBL was running via a Monster Hunter Freedom Unite exploit on PlayStation Vita Firmware 1.80, followed by Sony patching it in v1.81 with wololo back this weekend demonstrating a new game exploit running VHBL once again on PS Vita Firmware 1.81.

The video shows VHBL running Wagic (Magic the Gathering simulation) and gPSP (a GBA Emulator), however, once the new game exploit is publicly disclosed Sony will likely release another PS Vita Firmware update in order to resecure their handheld console once again.

Below is the video, and to quote from wololo's blog:

Latest Sony firmware 1.81 patches the Monster hunter exploit, but as usual, Sony has been kind enough to only patch that specific game, and not prevent VHBL itself from running. The video below shows VHBL running on firmware 1.81.

This is VHBL running on an undisclosed game exploit on firmware 1.81. In the video, I'm showing VHBL running Wagic, as well as Game Boy Advance's "Advanced Wars 2″ running through the GBA Emulator gPSP. Those of you with a good sense of sight might see that this is a quite old VHBL build, that's simply because I was too lazy to re-compile to the latest version, and I didn't really have to since this old build just ran out of the box.

It is no surprise that VHBL is still running, and I understand that at this point, people might be expecting more than VHBL. This is just to show that we still have access to these exploits, so those of you who updated and regret losing homebrew access see that there are still solutions being worked on. There is of course no word on a release yet, especially since the exploit is not mine. Those who want to keep homebrew on their Vita for now should stick to 1.80 and Monster Hunter.

As a reminder, anybody who owns a PSP can look for such exploits and port VHBL to them. Nowadays it requires more luck and dedication than programming skills!

I think as we've seen the video of ISOs running we no longer care for VHBL as its crap. We are waiting for ISOs to be running so hurry and release that devs. We now know you've been able to play backups for months so WHY wont you release it to the public?

If it needs VHBL to run then the care factor goes up to about 2 but as they wont release it'll stay at 0. Same as the care factor for the devs. Release it or go away.

Below is a demo video from wololo (via The Z from German site PSPKing.de) of a developer running PSP ISOs using a PSP ISO Loader on the PlayStation Vita handheld console.

To quote: "You might remember the hacker whom I nicknamed “Tony”, who was able to run PS1 games and psp isos with a CFW on a PS Vita. Or you might remember Davee’s HEN running on a PS Vita back in march. You might also remember that I mentioned that several groups are now in possession of a PSP kernel exploit on the Vita.

Well it seems today that a beta tester for one of these groups was not completely careful, and leaked a video showing him running psp isos on a Vita (video below).

I have been told that the initial video has since then been removed which is why I’m thinking of a beta-tester mistake, but that was probably too late and the video got copied to other networks such as youtube.

What I can tell you right now is that this video is legit, and that this is neither Davee nor “Tony”‘s work. But this should not be a surprise to most people here, as I’ve mentioned in the past that we know of at least 5 groups that have PSP kernel exploits.

It’s worth mentioning that these exploits do not use VHBL in any way, but it is likely that most of them would require to go through a user mode exploit first (which probably means one of the game exploits we typically release with our Ninja release system).

There is, of course, no word on a potential release of this hack."

From The Z (roughly translated), to quote: "On the Asian youku video platform now a video has surfaced showing a PS Vita, which launches a sort ISO Loader, bringing to all appearances the PSP ISOs and CSOs can start. Even if this has already been made possible by other projects from other developers, this is the first time that a video was made of it and published.

One can assume that this PSP ISO Loader will not be published for the PS Vita, as it Will not appear based on the VHBL is. Although this would appear PSP ISO Loader, the PS Vita would hardly hurt because no PS Vita can play ROMs or what is currently at the PS Vita is the most important thing."

Kinda pisses me off. They have had kernel hacks and can play ISOs for months but still force the public into VHBL which only lets you use homebrew in a usermode. As PSPs can already play ISOs what is the problem with letting the Vita play PSP ISOs?

Finally, in related PlayStation Vita hacking news today wololo reports (wololo.net/2012/09/15/is-that-a-jtag-port-on-the-vita/) that a JTAG port on the PS Vita may have been found, to quote:

Japanese developer goroh_kun, known locally for some of his work on Android, recently started investigating the PlayStation Vita. A few days ago he wondered if any hacker had seriously started to look into the Vita’s hardware (the answer was no, at least not publicly).

Yesterday he published a simple photo of the Vita CPU (picture below), showing what could be a JTAG port on the CPU. For those of you who don’t know, JTAG is a standard for electronics debugging (yay wikipedia!). It is used mostly for testing circuit boards (such as a console motherboards) during hardware development phases, but also in production, in order to randomly test retail units for quality control, or to check damaged units.

Could these 8 silver squares close to the CPU be JTAG ports? Because JTAG allows anybody to communicate with the hardware, it is, of course, used by hackers as well to learn more about the hardware they are dealing with.

Therefore a working JTAG port on a Sony console would probably be very useful for hackers, but it would also be extremely surprising. Sony has been known to factory-deactivate JTAG ports from their consoles in the past, so such a mistake would be extremely unlikely. But we’ll see

One interesting side-effect of this is that we are seeing more people coming from non-console hacking worlds into the Vita realm. Yifanlu was mostly known for work on the Kindle, and goroh_kun usually lurks in the Android scene. If anything, I would say that Sony’s consoles have gained a reputation of being fairly secure, and this attracts hardware and software hackers looking for a challenge.